They walked away, and I stared after them too shocked to move. I was alone with the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I realized I should say something, and then said the stupidest thing imaginable.
“You don’t have to worry,” I said. “She’s not hitting on him. She’s not like that.” I didn’t even know what that meant.
“I know,” Raisin said. “They’re talking about drugs.”
Drugs?
It hit me slowly, and when it did, I felt stupid. Aaron was a drug dealer, and Willow and he had left our presence to conduct some business negotiations. Somewhere along the line, I must have missed the secret handshake, the telltale wink.
I turned to look at Raisin as she toweled herself off. I watched a perfect bead of water roll down the length of her smooth, luscious arm. When I realized that I’d returned to gawking, I quickly averted my eyes and stared at the cement patio.
“Is she your girlfriend?” Raisin asked.
“No,” I said too quickly. “We’re just friends. Best friends.”
Silence.
Then my powers of conversation returned to me and I asked, “Is he your boyfriend?”
She shrugged.
“Is that a no?” I asked.
“He was, once, but I don’t know. It’s complicated now. I should have never run off with him. It was a mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should probably just leave, but it’s not that easy.”
“You don’t like him?” I said.
“I do sometimes—he’s not all bad. We don’t always get along. I don’t know. I just thought things would be different.”
They were both a long way from Boston, and I didn’t for a moment believe that they were on vacation.
“We left in May,” she said. “I didn’t even finish school.” She seemed like she was going to say more, then just shook her head. Maybe I wasn’t the only person having a truly crappy summer. “You seem like a nice person,” she added. I could feel myself beginning to float free of Earth’s heavy gravitational pull. “Stay cool, Scilla, and try not to fuck up.”
With these pearls of wisdom, she left. I watched her walk back toward the parking lot. I wondered if they even had a room here, and I knew the answer.
Our room was lavish, with two queen-size beds and classy-looking decorating. It was nice to see what Midge’s credit card could buy. Willow would catch hell when her father found out, but she probably had about a month or so until the statement arrived.
I had too much on my mind to sleep. Correction: I had one thing on my mind. I couldn’t get Raisin out of my head. This wasn’t just the stuff of fantasy. I was worried about her.
I flipped on the light over my bed and pulled the library book out of my backpack. I opened it up and read three pages about some partly insane general and an idiotic war fought a long, long time ago, but I couldn’t grasp a thing. My mind was too wired to concentrate. I needed fresh air. I crawled out of bed and opened the door quietly. The sidewalk felt rough under my bare feet. I flipped the safety lock open so it would keep the door from closing all the way.
The air outside was still and tinged with woodsmoke. Clouds obscured the stars. Patches of neon across the street and down the road provided the night’s illumination. Not too far away, the faint hum of trucks traveling along I-95 could be heard. Then I heard something else.
It took me a moment to place the quiet sound. It sounded like watery breathing. The sound of someone crying. The sobs were low and somewhat controlled. I knew right away who they belonged to—I’d been hearing that voice in my head the past few hours. It was Raisin.
I started to walk in the direction of her sobs, but stopped. I might not be wanted. I might make things worse. Fighting my instincts, I remained still and motionless, straining to hear anything at all.
“Would you quit crying already?” Aaron said. His voice was gruff, angrier than earlier.
“I don’t want to go. Not any more,” Raisin said between her quiet sobs.
“I told you it’s just for now, until this other stuff works out. This will probably be the last time.”
“You said that last time, and the time before.”
“Well, I’m working on it. And besides, I think things are coming together. My cousin’s setting things up. Come on, get in the car. We’ve got to go.”
“Aaron, I’m pregnant.”
“Jesus Fuck! When did that happen? Are you sure?”
“I was almost a month late, and I got one of those tests when we were at that place in Virginia.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I was scared. So, we don’t have to then, right?”
“What? Are you crazy? We need even more money now. We’re gonna have to pay for the operation.”
“Operation?”
“The abortion. You’re not thinking you’re gonna have a baby, are you?”
Suddenly Raisin’s sobs were no longer quiet.
“Would you shut up? You’re gonna wake up this whole goddamn place.”
“I’m not having an abortion.”
“Look around you, Rais. This ain’t no place for no fucking baby. You gotta have a home and jobs and shit in order to have a kid.”
“Well, we can get that.”
“Oh, for Chrissakes. Just get your ass in the car.”
I could have walked over there. I could have told Raisin she didn’t have to go with him, that she could come with me and Willow. I could have, but I didn’t move.
I heard the sound of the car door opening and closing. I edged along the sidewalk and at the corner stopped and held my breath. I could hear Raisin crying inside the car. They were only feet away from me, but I’d lost my nerve. Standing in the darkness, I peered around the corner of the building. They couldn’t see me, but I could see them. What I saw scared the hell out of me.
Raisin was sitting in the driver’s seat of the car. Aaron was standing by the car with a handgun. I watched in horror as he loaded it. He’s going to kill her, I thought, and before I could switch into superhero mode and save the day, he tucked the gun into the front of his jeans and hopped into the car. Raisin tromped on the gas and the car went careening out of the parking lot. I ran after them and watched as Raisin pulled out of the lot with even greater speed, fishtailing onto the main road. Within seconds they disappeared from sight, and the sound of their screeching tires still echoing in my head made me realize that Aaron didn’t look like some actor I’d seen in some movie.
He looked familiar because I’d seen him before, beneath the glow of the fluorescent lighting in Johnny’s Quik Mart. My last day there. He had been the sketchy guy who’d bolted when Joe Bullock and his merry band of idiots walked in. I thought of what I’d just seen, Aaron shoving that gun into his jeans. I played back the conversation in my head.
It was them. They were the pair robbing all those convenience stores. I gasped at this revelation, sucking in a lungful of smoke-tinged air that immediately sent me into a coughing fit. I thought of Raisin—beautiful, pregnant, and scared out of her mind. What the hell was wrong with her? Why didn’t she walk away from that pathetic loser boyfriend of hers? Didn’t she know she was living on borrowed time? That it was nothing but luck keeping her alive, and that luck of the dumbest variety?
I looked back toward our room, the door propped open a few inches by the safety lock. I thought of Willow inside, sleeping. We’d known each other our whole lives, but I barely even knew the girl in the hotel bed. She was nothing but a shadow of my best friend—she was nothing but the remains of Willow after nearly all the life had been stomped out of her.
Was I any different from Raisin? I was only here because of some stupid sense of loyalty, because once upon a time someone who shared the same name as that girl sleeping a drug-tinged slumber in that hotel room had been my best friend. I was no better off than a conscripted soldier in Sherman’s Army of the Potomac. I didn’t belong here, immersed in some ugly alien world, staring down a disturbing future.
When Willow and I had first left New Jersey, I think some small part of me envisioned us living it up, having the time of our lives on a wild summer vacation, perhaps our last vacation for a very long time. One last hurrah. But I couldn’t even pretend anymore that this trip was some whimsical plan hatched by my best friend, simply because it was the sort of thing the old Willow might have done. This was no lark. We were here because Willow was doing something for Craig. Craig was a drug dealer. I knew that whatever we were doing involved drugs, and was, no doubt, completely and totally against the law. Breaking laws seemed like a bad idea for two future criminal defendants.
The keys to the Acura sat on the hotel room dresser. All I had to do was creep back into the room, grab the keys, and search the car. The trunk. Confirm my suspicions. One call to Christian Calambeaux and it would all be over. Christian and the drug task force cavalry would come riding in before sunrise. They would seize the contraband and whisk us back home with one of us wearing a nice new pair of shiny silver bracelets. Perhaps it would be a big enough tip to earn me special protection. Perhaps it would be enough to free me from my own fate. I considered the idea for all of thirty seconds.
I couldn’t rat out Willow. She may have been scum. She may have been nothing but a drug-addicted shadow of her former self. But somewhere deep down inside, she was still Willow. She was my best friend, and we were in this together.
I shuffled back to our room. I could still hear those squealing tires echoing in my head, and fainter, the sound of Raisin crying. I knew I couldn’t rescue her. I couldn’t even save myself.
A Day Later
Willow found a motel in St. Petersburg with rates so cheap she could afford to pay for a week up front without setting off the suspicious-activity alarm bells on her mother’s credit card. We stood in the office, the decor and smell of which reminded me of my grandmother’s house. In a room just off the office someone was watching a soap opera. The manager or whoever the young man behind the desk was wrote up a receipt.
“You want to use the phone or the range? That’s extra.”
“No,” Willow said. “Just the basics.”
On the wall next to the door was a signed picture of Steven Seagal. I wondered what the hell it could possibly mean. Had Steven Seagal stayed in this dump? Was the owner a close personal friend? Or had someone merely paid the fifteen dollar annual dues to belong to the Steven Seagal fan club and received this picture in the mail?
“Let’s go,” Willow said. She grabbed my arm and yanked me away from my contemplation of the photograph. “We’re on the second floor. Third door from the stairs.”
Willow unlocked the door and we stepped into an oppressively hot room that smelled like sour milk. I opened the window while Willow turned on the fan and started to fool around with the air conditioner. There was one bed, which we would share, covered in a dirty pastel bedspread. The black-and-bright-yellow plaid carpeting clashed horribly. The rest of the decor had that garage-sale salvaged look.
“Can you hang here?” Willow asked. “I’ve got to go make a few phone calls.”
“Sure,” I said. I had clearly not been invited to come along with her.
I was exhausted. It had been a long trip, and the further we traveled, the less comfortable Mr. Jenkins’ car grew. I wanted to lie down and sleep but I didn’t like the looks of the bedspread, so I settled for the rattan chair that didn’t match the little kitchen table. I tried to close my eyes and doze, but the heat and the noise from the air conditioner kept me awake.
I regretted not telling someone, even Randy that we were coming down here.
I heard the door open and jerked my head up. I’d fallen asleep with my head resting on the table. It was Willow. Her face was pink and damp. She threw herself down on the bed in front of the air conditioner.
“There’s only one pay phone,” she said, “and it’s outside with not an inch of shade in sight.”
“You could use your cell in here,” I suggested.
“My father canceled my service,” she said. Her words were quick and dismissive, and she turned away from me when she spoke. I knew she was lying. I thought of all the lies I’d told her this summer.
“Let’s go home,” I said.
“What?” she said. “We just got here, and we’ve paid through the week.”
“Why are we in Florida anyway?”
“I’m helping Craig out with some stuff. Are you going to run and tell your FBI agent friend?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“For Chrissakes, Scilla.”
“I haven’t talked to him since … ” Since the night of the concert, but I couldn’t say that. “Besides, he’s not how you think he is. He’s a good person. He’s just trying to help.” I was telling Willow what Bill had told me, and I didn’t know why.
That night, we found a pizza parlor whose theme was, of all things, New York City. On Florida’s gulf coast we ate pizza surrounded by murals depicting the New York skyline and the subway system. The pizza made me think of Randy, and after we went back to the motel, I waited until she was asleep and then went out to use the pay phone.
“Randy?”
“Scilla? Where the hell are you two?”
“Florida,” I said. “St. Petersburg.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Randy, what happened to you at college? Why did you leave early?”
“That’s over. It doesn’t matter. Are you guys okay? Do you have enough money?”
“I don’t want your money.” I was crying now. “Randy, just tell me what the hell happened to you.”
“Scilla, it doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you when you get home. When are you guys coming home?”
“I don’t know. What did you mean, that day in the car when you said that thing about death following you?”
“Scilla,” he said, but then he didn’t say anything else. I almost wondered if we had somehow gotten cut off, but then he said, “There’s no way to tell the story that doesn’t make me look bad. Still, I don’t think I’m a bad person. I’ve never tried to hurt anyone, but maybe I’ve never saved anyone from getting hurt, either. Anyway, it’s always nice to have some extra money, and when you’re a full-time student there’s only so many jobs open to you. Most of them don’t pay so well. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision as something that just sort of developed. I went to a party and someone wanted to buy some pot from me, and then that person told someone else, and then suddenly I was Randy Jenkins, the drug dealer. There was talk in the spring, nothing but rumors, about something new called Ferocity, and this girl Danielle I knew from history class wanted to get her hands on some. She wasn’t actually the angelic innocent the newspapers and everyone made her out to be. We’re talking about a girl with a serious drug problem. I didn’t know shit about Ferocity, but she kept asking me for it. So, I got it for her. Shit, I don’t even think she knew what it was, but maybe she heard from someone that it was the greatest kick around or the never-ending high or whatever other crap people say about Ferocity. Well, she took it and she went Ferocity crazy, just completely blank, and then this guy Brandon, her boyfriend, he shot her. To put her out of her misery, he said. He’s in jail now.”
“And you’re free,” I said.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Randy said. “She wanted it. If she didn’t get it from me, she would have gotten it from somewhere else. If some dude dies of lung cancer, you don’t arrest the guy who owns the convenience store where the dead guy bought his cigarettes, right?”
I didn’t say anything for a while. I was angry at Randy for being Randy. He was such a useless bastard.
“We’re down here because Willow’s doing something for Craig.”
“Jesus,” Randy said. “You’re a couple of world-class morons, you know that? You want to spend the rest of your lives behind bars?”
“It wasn’t my idea. Willow isn’t even including me in any of the details.” I didn’t tell him why.
“You two have to
come home,” Randy said.
“I already tried that,” I said. “Willow isn’t interested.”
“Fine. Then I’ll come down there and get you.”
“Randy—”
But I didn’t know what to say. I think this was what I wanted, after all. Why else had I called Randy if not for him to come rescue us? But I was angry. He’d told his story about what had happened at college without emotion. He really didn’t care. He really didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. Yet he was mad at me and Willow for doing more or less the same thing.
“We can take care of ourselves,” I said.
“Apparently not.”
“I’ve got things under control. I know what to do. I’ve got to go now.”
“Okay,” Randy said. “Bye.”
“Bye,” I said. I hung up, then almost immediately I dialed Christian’s number.
It was the apartment and Merry answered. I was afraid she was going to hang up on me.
“It’s really important,” I said. “I’m in Florida.”
“You’re the scrawny one?” she asked. “I think he’s pissed at you.”
I waited for the line to go dead, then heard Christian’s voice.
“Priscilla? Are you okay?”
“Oh, just peachy,” I said. “No, not really. That was sarcasm. I’m in bit of a jam.”
“How big of a bit, and what sort of jam?”
“I’m in Florida with Willow. We’re down here because Willow’s doing something for Craig. I think she might be in over her head.”
“Florida? Where in Florida?”
“St. Petersburg.”
“Oh,” was all he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It just complicates things,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
After I hung up, I felt sick. He didn’t care about helping us. He definitely didn’t care about helping Willow. I wanted to call him back and tell him to forget it, that everything was fine, but it was too late now. I’d already told him what he wanted to know.
When I went back upstairs to our room, Willow looked like she was still asleep, but when I slipped into the bed beside her, she asked who I’d called.
Ferocity Summer Page 17